Blood Sport
by Twokut
Summary: Two peculiar men are living next door, one of them is a rude little asshole. The other is a psychopath. All Donquixote Rosinante wanted was a little bit of peace and quiet from his neighbors. [ModernAU/CoraxLaw/KiddxLaw]


**All characters belong to Mr. Eichiro Oda.**

One Piece Modern AU

Warnings: **Cora/Law, Kidd/Law, Slash, Mature content**

* * *

The sun is way too hot. Buttons are melting, dogs are barking in heat. Sleeves drenched in sweat, the old lady next door broke her hips when she fell down the stairs the moment she passed out from the abysmal temperature this morning. Standing there felt silly for the man, staring at the ambulance picking up the elder woman into their stretcher seemed like a weird way to waste his time. The crone was awake when she passed him by, _Rosinante_ , he heard her say. Feed my cats while I'm away would you dear?

 _No_. He would have said it, right there and then. But she looked ancient, her waving arm was the literal definition of antiquity, and the fact that she was looking like she would pitifully pass away with a fracture in her hips made Rosinante swallow his negativity down his own throat. Maybe what Diamante said was true. Maybe he was too kind. Perhaps he was kind to a point where people perceived him as the ultimate yes-man. Maybe it was true when Diamante pointed out that he was too nice to a point where he almost looked like a " _fucking pushover_." _Well_ , the man thought rather flustered inside his head, _that's not true_.

And then there is the meow. The blonde man had to crook his head right down to stare at the ball of fur, looking up at him expectantly with those ridiculously cute feline eyes. Being tall was one foul asset he had on his inevitable list, Doflamingo didn't seem to mind, but then again his brother was a bloody sociopath who liked drawing shadows over others. Maybe it was true that he was too gentle. Rosinante had thirty years to use his brother as an excuse for being the kinder one out of the two, but somehow these days Diamante's point seemed to get clearer and clearer. He furrowed his eyes for a while, if there was one person other than his crazy brother in this world that he did not wish to agree on the same opinion, that was Ser Diamante. Out of pure frustration, Rosinante took longer to realize he was spilling tuna over the little ball of fur meowing in distress.

Just because he didn't want to admit that Diamante was beginning to sound sane, Rosinante decided to dump the cat food waste into the recycling bin. He felt proud for his bad deed indeed.

* * *

Thirty two and still looking the prime of his twenties. Being a gentleman of course had its downsides; he wasn't popular with the kids. High school girls seemed to think of him as a bit of a nerd, Rosinante didn't mind. High school was a little dark phase in his life, besides he was thirty two now. It wasn't the right time to be playing young with girls who were distant by twelve years. The older ladies on the other hand thought him a sweetheart. Women. He'd never know how to understand them. And Jora, well… he frowned, his fingers motionless above the keyboard for a short moment. Rosinante squinted at the email, reading the words all over again. It didn't change the content though, it was still the same Jora with her ridiculous email design looking something half degrading Picasso and half the content urging him to return to the mansion where his brother was waiting for him to come home.

Donquixote Rosinante had no intentions of returning home, not now, not ever. Well perhaps on thanksgiving he'd go for a few days. With wine. And some chocolates packaged inside bulletproof boxes, never forget chocolates in a family gathering. But really, the thought of having to sit on the same dinner table with the very brother he sold out to his boss seemed like a highly uncomfortable idea, the only reason Doflamingo would want him back there would be so that he could drive a damn bullet through his head. Rosinante sniffed. It wasn't like he regretted it.

Besides, he was comfortable with his current life. Although thanks to Dofy's business he was now a proud jobless pile of flesh that had nothing but carbon dioxide to offer to society, he had free time, some leisure, and profitable space for himself in a quiet apartment…

Well almost a quiet apartment. When Sengoku, his boss, decided to lay him down for a while on a quiet vacation after his brother's fiasco, the man basically meant that he wanted a quiet vacation for Rosinante. They found a nice spot for him down the East Coast, a modern studio apartment down the alleyway. A lot of artists and musicians preferred the place; the back street was filled with pubs so it wasn't unnaturally quiet all around. A few steps outside and it was fresh air with people, Rosinante liked the calm hustling atmosphere, even though it was also true that often drunkards pestered the place when the sun went down.

The problem however, began just around last month. Now thinking about it, Rosinante had to admit it was starting to become a major discomfort in his life; being a former police officer meant that he was used to a protocol ridden life controlled by healthy policies of diet coke, fruit juice, salad based diet, normal exercise and most importantly, the right time to sleep and wake up. This partially meant that one; he had an obligation to wake up at six in the morning feeling refreshed and ready for a new day, and two it was equally important for him to be able to sleep soundly starting from midnight when he was tucked up happily inside his bed. The second in his list was being intercepted rather discouragingly for nearly three weeks.

In all honest truth, Rosinante came quite close for the past week to banging on the damn door of his neighbor who moved in the recent month, the said neighbor who was starting to become the seed of all evil in Rosinante's life. Perhaps their biological clock worked a little differently to normal people in society, but all the banging and crashing at three in the morning seemed extreme to the blonde man who desperately wanted to get some sleep. It was prime time when he felt he had to do something about it was the time when the glass smashing sounded a bit like crashing torpedoes, it was either his neighbor having a problem containing his excitement at watching soccer when he was a devoted F.C fan, that or he or she had an amazing phobia of cockroaches and was signaling an aggressive call out for pest control.

By the time Rosinante realized he couldn't take it anymore, he went to knock on the door several times but to no avail. Being ignored was enough to annoy him, the noise was unbearable. The old lady on the other side was deaf so she didn't mind, but Rosinante had to help the young college student living downstairs calm down when he marched upstairs with a face that shouted murder.

So for a week he endured the abuse, the blonde was starting to suspect his brother had hired his neighbor to annoy him to death. It was only four days ago when he actually first met with whoever that was causing the noise. That was still summer, blazing, sweaty, annoyed, and that bloody red hair stood out like wild fire in such condition.

It was, to say, a very impressive first meeting in an awkwardly infuriating way. Donquixote Rosinante accepted that he was, in a fact, quite a nice guy. But the man was firm; he knew a look when he saw one and his red haired neighbor frankly had a look that shot out knives. Feeling like a knife just went through his neck, Rosinante stared on equal grounds with his new affiliation, heavy build, and pale, shirtless.

Damn, shirtless. He could see where the confidence spurts from.

Maybe it was the heat making things up, but the paler man had that look in his amber eyes that was just telling you to fuck the right off. Well, Rosinante had an exclusive tendency to be around those kind of looks all his life, and figuring that compared to Doflamingo everything else seemed cuter, the blonde did not fuck the right off. And that, seemed to piss on the other man downright. The pale hands banged shut the door so hard that it shuddered in the wooden frame, he smelled of heavy musk, metal, and something foreign, a scent that did not belong to him. Walked a few steps out onto the corridor, clearly he was going somewhere, _without a shirt_. Rosinante felt silly for that little detail that bothered him so much. Maybe it was the influence of Jora, he was uncomfortable with too much skin being shown.

Despite the fact that it was a genuine coincidence that they happened to cross paths, Rosinante was obliged to share a piece of his mind about all the noise happening in the youth's house; the punk looked only in his early twenties. It was barely when he opened his mouth that the paler one spat at his feet, Donquixote Rosinante wasn't pleased. For a moment there was a phase of 'loss for words', the former police officer cherished young pride but rudeness was a pet peeve of his.

"Out of my way, pops."

And yes, Rosinante was a man of virtue. He was straightforward, and just. That was his main qualities that made young girls define him as a justice-nerd, but it also meant that when he had something to say, he had to say something. However, something in the way that the young punk spat it out between his lips, and the way that he just smashed his shoulders into his own and walked past without another word of recognition,

-it all just made Rosinante stand there in mute silence with a look on his face that suggested he was just slapped in the face.

* * *

Garp wasn't joking when he said he smashed his car.

But it was a Mercedes. Sengoku tried, like all the other times when he failed, to see reason behind Garp's destructive habits. Signing the insurance contract was the hardest paper to sign out of the forty other pages waiting for his approval in the courts department of justice. The old man needed a holiday, he was starting to get grey hairs and he wasn't even fifty.

"Thinking of holidays, how is your vacation going?"

"Abhorrently."

"What?"

"No… I'm sorry, it just came out."

The sudden vocabulary made the director shoot his head up from the table, the blonde man remained seated on the sofa with his legs shaking the table. Only when their eyes met Rosinante shot his head down in gloomy silence, Sengoku then noticed how pale and exhausted the man looked. That wasn't a face he expected to see, a month on vacation would normally rejuvenate a person, not suck the life out of them.

"What in the world happened to you boy?"

"Just… fatigue.. I suppose."

"You're on vacation Rosinante. What are you possibly doing to be tired on a vacation?"

That is a genius question sir, the younger one replied, and I'm not being sarcastic. He added. Sengoku looked troubled to as which face he should put on to face the younger man, frankly he looked like he walked out of a zombie apocalypse, just with a little rage instead of defeat. It was unusual for Rosinante to look that much pissed off, he was usually quite placid towards feelings, and the poker face was a strange characteristic that ran in his family.

"I was going to ask you about your plans to return to work, but I'm having second thoughts now."

"No, no, I can return. I'll be happy to return, it's just that…"

Sengoku waited for the reply to finish, but Rosinante seemed to have trailed off. Sure he wanted to return to work, two months of doing nothing would have readied him for more tasks his superior had in hand, but there were two things that bothered him since the encounter with his flaming neighbor four days ago. He could just move away, find a better place where he would be happier. But then again, the punk had blatantly flipped him off in so many levels that his forgotten pride was beaming with a shallow rage inside his poor excuse of a manly heart. That feeling when you had to say something to express displeasure when someone had been rude to you, and yet you immediately couldn't and ended up being bypassed with rudeness so suddenly. That rising unfairness, that annoyance, that fucking red haired punk…

"You're crushing my table Rosinante."

"Sorry."

He let go of the table immediately, the wooden shards off the decorative curve across the lined table were dropping off on the carpet out of pure rage. Seems like you have a problem you want to solve first. His superior mumbles between the rice crackers in his lips, eyes back down onto the paper he was signing. Rosinante could've looked sorrier if he wasn't so angry at the thought of his inconsiderate neighbor.

"Perhaps a bit longer, and then I can get back to work."

"Sounds reasonable I suppose… The Doflamingo Corporation is still up and running, might be dangerous for you to return just now."

Rosinante nodded slowly with a word of thanks. He was now determined to share a piece of his mind and bang it right into the punk's face when they met again.

* * *

So it began, another three days of trying to catch his neighbor leaving the house. As all the knocks and bangs were cleanly ignored there was little choice left but to hang outside until the door clicked open. Due to his clumsy nature however, it was harder to actually make the moment happen- most times he ended up falling asleep on his sofa thanks to the sleepless nights his neighbor was responsible for. It was only one of those sleeping moments that Rosinante randomly woke up with a nightmare consisting of Vergo and teddy bears. The man took a while to squiggle up from his carpet, twisting his body so that he could stand up properly. He spilled his coffee again, and the packet of Marlboro was nowhere to be found. Frustration was starting to get the better of him, the sun was already down but the ac'less room was already built with heat. Swiping the tears of sweat off his neck, the man proceeded to open windows when he noticed something familiar, jewel scarlet and murky brown on the outside floor below. Although it was dry, it reeked of a fishy scent.

Perhaps seeing blood would've been more alarming if he didn't know his neighbors face. It was only a little bit odd, Rosinante pocketed his lighters as he opened his door and walked outside. It was eleven at night and most of the neighborhood was getting ready to tuck in. The house next door was completely dark, unsurprising though. It was always dark. Lightless, Rosinante stood outside their doors staring down at the knob scathed with dried blood. Half of his mind refused to agree that it was that simple for the doors to open, but it did, and a strange calm rushed over his mind when that small little click of the door welcomed the uninvited guest inside when he twisted the knob. The hinges let go almost instantly, and there was the cold breeze of wind rushing out of the pitch black entrance.

Rosinante wondered if he should let his presence be known. There is a certain feeling though, a premonition of a sort if you may. It is a rather quirky feeling when you know that a box, or a container is empty or not by just simply, looking. A strange thought, disturbing but like a jar of worms. The man would've stepped back outside, closed the door and that would've been it. He'd wait another day to encounter his flame haired neighbor with unimaginable flaws.

But instead he stepped in.

It was strangely colder inside the house, the blinds were all drawn, specs of dust reflected by the neon signs outside the glass all neatly sitting on top of furniture that looked like it hadn't been touched in days, perhaps weeks. Rosinante didn't have a faintest clue how to think, he was trespassing, and this was a first. But something was drawing him in, and he knew what it was. It was that foreign scent the pale youth lingering around his arms, and only his arms, hands, and fingers. A person doesn't have a scent like that. Only decorated corpses do. It wasn't his scent, and it had to have a source.

And that scent was here. Lingering. Maybe Rosinante was thinking too hard, but the scene of expensive and yet untouched furniture reminded him of his mother's death bed. There was nothing among the shelves, broken needles scattered around thin sheets of white across the table in the kitchen made the tall man pause, blood scattered across the wooden floor could have been almost unnoticeable if not for him stepping inside it. Murky, dark, and slippery. For a moment his eyes widened at such spectacle, there was something wrong in this house and he couldn't pick up exactly what was.

Rosinante turned on the lights, the pale lamp drowning the room revealed quite a mess; he opened one of doors only to find an empty room. The bed was there, without blankets but ripped sheets and a mattress soaked in splatters of red. It also smelled of something familiar, night rose, Rosinante frowns. Unusual, he thought. It didn't look like a murder scene, but traces of violence. Broken pieces of plastic was scattered across the floor, dried bandages hanging off a lone mirror standing right in front of the bed. A slight panic rose on his neck, something was definitely wrong, it hastened his hands that started turning on all the lights of this damn house. By the time he reached the last door he knew what this door was, it was the bathroom. It also happened to be the only door that did not open.

To hell with not opening doors. Frustrated beyond a measure, Rosinante grabbed the knob and twists it with a force, the immobile door just refused to open with his effort. The man put off an annoyed sigh, walking back a few steps he hoped there was no burglar alarms installed when he kicked it clean through the hinge. With a loud clatter the obstacle went down, one of the hinges came off and half of it swung open in a limp. His fingers fumbled with the walls for a moment until he found the block of plastic that clicked open with a light soon after, revealing a rather disturbing sight.

Whatever Rosinante expected to find, he definitely wasn't expecting a half naked man looking like a corpse curled up on the floor beside a very bloody looking toilet. The man rushed out a few steps only to slip on the blood stains above the cold ceramic. He lost his balance for a while before actually managing to safely land beside the lying body. The blood stained shirt looked useless without most of its buttons broken and scattered across the floor, the front was all open to reveal a bruised rib cage, smothered in patterns of ink above an olive tanned skin. Black trunks stuck above his slim thighs, broken toes writhed slightly when Rosinante leaned down to pull him out underneath the single pipe connected to the toilet. It suggested he wasn't dead yet, in a rush the blonde reached out to support the youth's head, witnessing fresh bruises and ripped lips spewing out blood along with his nostrils.

Rosinante saw no point in calling out to him, under his ebony hair the darkly bruised eyes seemed to have no thought in opening. In a cool calm he tried pulling him into his arms until a preventing clatter forced him to see the chain strangling the tattooed wrist onto the toilet pipe. Rosinante spits out gruff words of profanity before he moves on to hurry the chain off his wrist, it was a brief moment of grim realization that this was wrong on so many planes of his understanding. The former policeman did not even have the time to realize that a pair of barely open grey eyes staring up at him, with a surprised jolt he almost rammed his back against the wall and fell off his balance.

"Hey, are you alright?"

It was an obsessive obligation to ask, but he had to, the young man lying on the floor didn't look like he was alright. And yet, in a rather alarming sense, the twisting lines across the others lips seemed unnaturally full of amusement.

"I know you." He coughs out the words, turning his bruised face over to get a better look of the blonde man, his unchained wrist reaching out and mock-pointing with a spinning gesture of his fingers. "You're our asshole neighbor who keeps destroying my cactus plants."

"I did what?"

Rosinante momentarily forgot everything he was doing and felt the clatter of chains go limp, he stared blinking down at the damaged man below. The darker one squinted, trying to get his sight out of the lamp light.

"Your cigarette butts."

"My?"

"Yes. You keep throwing them off the veranda. They land in my cactus pots."

The blonde was lost for words. This was the second time he felt like he was slapped across the face, but in a less rude and less degrading way. The nonchalant smile disappeared from the younger man's face, his nose bleeding again.

"Hey, wait- hang on, I'll get you out. Stay with me."

"Would love to. Wake me up when you get me back into my bed. You are welcome to join me."

Rosinante really had no reply for that. He almost felt silly for fearing that the other might die, he seemed to be in the vibe of 'I'm-completely-fine-with-kicking-the-bucket' attitude. By the time he was able to lift the dark haired man in his arms and out of the gory scene, it was already past midnight.

No sleep for Rosinante once again.


End file.
